44/365 :: Tuesday 13 February 2018I managed to take 1300 pictures in a week. one day I will learn how to set up shortcuts in Lightroom.

45/365 :: Wednesday 14 February 2018I dug out my 10-24 mm lens for the first time in at least a year. it was great to get out and try to capture the sunset colors, but they're always better on days when I'm not able to take pictures.

46/365 :: Thursday 15 February 2018I've been reading John Green's books for the first time, and while Looking for Alaska is probably still my favorite, The Fault in Our Stars really hurt.​"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them."

47/365 :: Friday 16 February 2018​happy lunar new year!

48/365 :: Saturday 17 February 2018I spent the morning trying to figure out what the ice-carver outside my window was making. it turns out it was a sturgeon.

41/365 :: Saturday 10 February 2018​I, too, wish I thought of that first.

42/365 :: Sunday 11 February 2018I once learned to shove all of my most necessary possessions into a small bag so that I could hide in a small room to observe the world around me. the entertainment never ends.

29/365 :: Monday 29 January 2018same lake, different city. Port Washington, Wisconsin. a few hours behind the wheel to breath someone else's air. a lovely lunch at a little cafe, and a trip to Target on the way home.

a year ago, I knew what it was like to be alone. I had been alone for a long time. I could go days without getting a text from anyone other than my momager. I would wake up alone, I would fall asleep alone, and there would be hours in between there where I would be alone. granted, there were hours that I wasn’t alone, and days when I would hear from multiple people. no one could actually understand everything that I was going through each day because no one actually knew everything I was going through every day. it was really hard around this time last year. I spent a lot of time doing things for other people (which isn’t a bad thing, it kept me busy and gave me something to keep me going, even if it was exhausting at times), and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing with my life.

I had returned from a week and a half in Ecuador, where I spent most hours of all of those days with at least one, but usually two and many times more than that, person. and then when I boarded that flight from Atlanta to Minneapolis, I was on my own again. there were people around, but no one I knew. my flight back to Appleton was delayed, delayed, delayed, and then cancelled. I was exhausted, I was frustrated, and I was sad. at this point, I hadn’t taken a shower or changed my clothes in over twenty-four hours, and I might have gotten three hours of sleep on a red-eye flight in the same amount of time. I just wanted to go home. it seemed impossible, but thanks to my father’s assistance, I ended up driving and getting home to brush my teeth and sleep and try to get back to normalcy in the morning.

and then things changed. there was a person who seemed interested in my life and I felt like I had a new lifeline. the thing is, I have a couple super close friends. we’re all busy and it’s hard for us to have the time to be committed to continually growing those relationships. but this new lifeline allowed me to spend time getting to know someone I hadn’t known as well before. it filled my heart with joy to be able to feel heard by someone different. but it shifted pretty quickly. it was rocky for a little bit there, but once everything fell back into place, it blossomed again and it was incredible to me to have someone there, any time. everything eventually shattered. it still stings, even six months later.it’s different this winter. because I know what it was like to not be this alone. I cherished that, and there’s this fear inside me that I’ll never have that again.

let me tell you a secret. it’s hard for me to meet people and let strangers into my life. I don’t like being around crowds, or going to bars, and I don’t know how else people make friends these days. the people I do meet are all from the same group, and while I feel like I belong to a point, it’s also pretty clear that I am an outsider and I feel like I now have to keep a wall up so that I don’t get too close and have everything ripped away from me again.

it’s not cool for me to say that I don’t have friends because to me friends are people who show that they care and actually reach out, when I haven’t been reaching out either. but it gets to be that I feel like I’m being annoying because I feel that I am always the one who initiates the conversation, and that just leaves me hurting even more.

please, before you think that I’m over here calling all of the people in my life terrible friends, please, please realize that this is how it feels for someone whose anxiety level is just so high that they think they’re bothering someone when they reach out or that everyone is avoiding them for a reason that they know is non-existent, but the little voice in the back of their head is telling them otherwise. please know that as I write these feelings, I can’t sleep and only heard from one non-stranger today. it’s the twenty-ninth, which for years has dragged me down. please know that my heart is filled with so much love, but on nights like tonight, I feel like it’s one-sided. please know that I appreciate it more than you’ll ever understand when someone else makes the first move and that it’s so difficult for me to reach out because of the times I’ve been burned in the past.

it’s impossible for anyone to what my life is like without walking a day in my shoes, but here is the best way for me to try to help someone understand. if you see me and think that I’ve cut myself off from the world, it’s not because I don’t care.

22/365 :: Monday 22 January 2018​bedside books. I would be lost if it wasn't for the library.

23/365 :: Tuesday 23 January 2018​more books, after yet another trip to the library. my favorite part of teaching preschoolers is reading picture books!

24/365 :: Wednesday 24 January 2018this mirror was the first thing I hung in this apartment, just over two years ago. a TJ Maxx find around Halloween which hung in the bedroom of my old apartment, it's still one of my favorite things here.

25/365 :: Thursday 25 January 2018a beautiful winter day at the lake.

26/365 :: Friday 26 January 2018I have managed to keep this plant alive for five months, but I still need to figure out aperture on my camera.

27/365 :: Saturday 27 January 2018outgoing mail. I really love these top two postcards.

28/365 :: Sunday 28 January 2018real life uniform. I would love to wear skirts and dresses and boots every day, but it's a lot easier to run around in skinny jeans and Converse.

it was January 21, 2015 the first time I saw it. I was on my way to Cave Point and quite honestly, a bit lost. (it turns out I wasn’t as lost as I thought I was at the time.) for years, I’ve been fascinated by abandoned buildings. they hold stories but yet they’ve been left behind and now the earth is taking them back.

in searching through a hard drive of photos (which always finds me down a rabbit hole of laughter), I realized that I haven’t taken as many photos here as I thought, and that the majority of those times were in the past year. I’ve begun taking photos of myself here to document not only the changes of the house and the seasons, but also changes in my life.

27 February 2017

I really lucked out with the sky that first time. that photo was submitted as an art piece for Love On Holiday 2016, and three songs were written about it: Beautiful Wreck, Watch Her Fall, and Try. at least one of those songs makes me cry every time I hear even the opening chords, but the truth is that each of those songs has at least one line of personal pull in it for me. the lovely seven songwriters who wrote these songs weren’t entangled enough in my daily life (and I didn’t talk to any of them about the photograph until they wrote their songs) to know that their songs were already inside my bones, but I guess at the same time, if you listen hard enough, you can always find something personal in any song.

pivotal moments always draw me to this haunting house, and numbers keep bringing me back, too. I’ll continue to visit to watch the seasons alter the sky and the leaves.

it’ll never be my house, but it might be my home.

16 January 2018

disclaimer: there are multiple signs here that say “no trespassing.” the only reason that I have stepped off the road and onto the property was to be out of the way of passing traffic. (this disclaimer seems necessary because of some photos of Chateau Hutter that were taken in 2013.) however, if you happen to know the person who owns this house, I would love to see the inside.

9/365 :: Tuesday 9 January 2018I was going to go outside and take pictures, but then I just wanted to keep reading instead.

10/365 :: Wednesday 10 January 2018foggy drive to the lake.

11/365 :: Thursday 11 January 2018I decided to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events this year, which I read when I was in middle school. I really do enjoy Lemony Snicket's writing style (and he has written some beautiful picture books in the past few years as well), but I don't remember the books being so violent.

12/365 :: Friday 12 January 2018​I love sending snail mail.

13/365 :: Saturday 13 January 2018if I had daughters, I would have a shelf with all of these books.

in 2015 (and maybe a year or two before that), I completed a "project 365" in which I took a photo with my DSLR every day. I started this again in 2016, but I don't think I completed it after I stopped blogging in March that year.

after taking what I considered to be a sadly small number of photos in 2017, and missing out on capturing moments that I now wish I would have, I decided that I would pull my camera back out (okay, fine, it's always sitting on the dining room table anyway) and take at least one photo every day. a lot of them will probably be from around my apartment, but I'm hoping that it will force me out into the world a little more often.

1/365 :: Monday 1 January 2018​starting the new year with a new happiness project journal, even though I still have five weeks or so in the first one.

5/365 :: Friday 5 January 2018a corner of my home. no, I never learned how to play that beautiful guitar. it hasn't been played in about seven/eight months, and I haven't played it in over a year. I don't have the desire to learn it anymore, but it sure is beautiful.​

6/365 :: Saturday 6 January 2018I love going out every winter to see this frozen puzzle on the bay.